Reckonings

by Carla Jablonski

  “That’s quite a girl you’ve got there, Tim-Cat,” the Body Artist commented. “Maybe you’ll deserve her one of these days.”

  Chapter Four

  THE BODY ARTIST CARRIED the cat-boy-magician through the dark streets of London. The rain had stopped, which pleased her. It meant she didn’t have to bother using her energy to keep herself dry.

  She passed several rough bars and bohemian cafés; small locked-up, gated shops; and a few furtive, dark-clothed people. She didn’t want anyone to notice her, so no one did, despite her eye-grabbing appearance.

  She came to a seedy street, turned the corner, and unlocked the door to a darkened store. The words “Circe’s Tattooing, Piercing, and Other Alterations” were etched on the glass door.

  She flicked on the lights and placed the cage holding the cat on a stainless steel table. “So, tell me, Tim-Cat, how long have you been doing the shape-walk?”

  The cat yawned and rolled over.

  “Tim-Cat? Hello?” She slipped a finger with a long violet-painted nail between the bars of the cage and scratched the cat under the chin. “I’m talking to you.”

  The cat pressed its face against her finger and purred.

  “Oh, I forgot,” the Body Artist said. “You’re still charmed. Silly me. Sorry about that. I hate one-sided conversations.”

  She bent down so that she could look the cat in the eyes. “Cat, hear your name. Cat, wake. Sharp of eye. Keen of ear. Clear of mind. Wake.”

  The cat gave a small shake of its head and suddenly seemed more alert.

  “That’s better,” the Body Artist declared. “Maybe now we can have a nice little chat.”

  Cat-Tim gazed through the bars of a cage. “Mrrrrow!” it complained. I want to go outside.

  “Huh?” Tim’s thoughts were all mixed up, and he felt very quiet inside his groggy brain. The cat’s thoughts were stronger and louder.

  Outside! Cat-Tim insisted. Outside right now.

  Tim’s eyes finally took in his surroundings. The bars, the strange place. The intense woman from the park. “That doesn’t seem to be an option at the moment,” Tim explained to the cat.

  But there are pigeons to chase outside.

  “We’re in a cage, you dweeb,” Tim said, “or hadn’t you noticed? Sheesh!”

  The cat sat up on its hind legs and placed its front paws on the bars, straining to get to the pigeons perched on the windowsill outside. But I see pigeons to play with. Don’t you?

  “Tim-Cat, do you mind?” the Body Artist said. “I’d like to speak to you. Now then, are you taking any medications? Have any allergies? Meow once for yes, twice for no.”

  Look! The fat pigeon just flew into the wall! How silly.

  The Body Artist cocked her head and looked at him. “Tim-Cat? What is the matter with you?”

  I want to go outside, Cat-Tim insisted.

  “Outside,” Tim repeated. If it was possible for a brain to yawn, Tim’s did. “Outside.”

  “You want to go—?” The Body Artist let out a hooting laugh. “Snap out of it, Tim! You’re getting all tangled up in body thoughts. You’re letting the cat part take over.”

  She flicked her violet nails on the bars of the cage, then gave it a shake. “Yoo-hoo! Wake up, Tim!”

  The movement jolted Tim. “What?” he asked. He gazed around the room. “What’s going on?”

  We’re going to go see pigeons, Cat-Tim replied.

  “Shut up about the bloody pigeons,” Tim ordered. “I don’t want to think about stupid birds. I want to think about getting out of here!”

  “Listen up, Timmy-Kitty,” the Body Artist said. “Here’s your problem. You’ve hooked your consciousness straight into your body’s autonomic nervous system. That’s wrong.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Tim snapped. “Being a cat is wrong. Being here is…” His eyes wandered around the room. He spotted a collection of terrifying-looking tools and stuff he imagined lunatic doctors used in crazy science experiments. “Being here is definitely wrong.”

  “Hey, who told you to turn yourself into a cat in the first place?” the Body Artist countered. “Shape work is like driving. You don’t crawl inside the motor to make the car go, you sit behind the wheel.” She gave him another look. “Oh wait. That example won’t work for you—you’re too young to drive. You probably don’t even shave yet.”

  She laughed sharply and gave him a smirk. The woman reminded Tim of someone, but Cat-Tim was taking up too much space in his brain for him to remember who. He had noticed it in the park, too, some familiar quality, particularly in the way she had talked to Marya and Molly.

  “It would be terribly unfair of me to read you as though you were a grown man, but I suppose I’ve got to,” she said, tapping her purple fingernails on the cage. “You’re not likely to give me another chance to open you up after this. And you’re simply too powerful to be trusted.”

  “Open me up? What do you mean?” That didn’t sound promising to Tim. He didn’t like the fact that she could obviously read his thoughts—both his and the cat’s. How much more “reading” did she have in mind?

  But if the Body Artist heard his questions, she ignored them. She began clearing off a nearby table. “Do you know how long I had to study shaping before I could borrow a cat’s body? But you—you did it on the spur of the moment, didn’t you?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Tim responded.

  I don’t remember, Cat-Tim said.

  The Body Artist blinked and looked puzzled. Then her eyes narrowed with wary suspicion. “Hang on,” she murmured. She stood in front of the cage, staring hard at Tim.

  Tim felt a strange sensation in his head, almost a tickle. A warm wave ran through him, and then everything was normal again.

  The Body Artist gasped and stepped away from him. “I don’t believe it,” she exclaimed. “You didn’t borrow that body. You made it. From nothing. How much power do you have?”

  Tim’s cat senses could feel the fear in her. It made him afraid, too, because her fear was mixed with anger.

  She paced the room. “So the rumors about your power are true. And your girl, Molly, has good reason to be afraid. You have all the potential to become exactly what she described in your future.”

  She got herself under control and approached the cage again. “I’m not so concerned anymore about treating you like a grown man. I should treat you like a sworn enemy, until I know otherwise. I’ve never seen this kind of power.”

  “But—”

  “Nighty-night, now, kitty. Named Cat. Bound Cat. Cat-Tim. Sleep. Sleep now.”

  Tim couldn’t fight it. His eyes closed and all of his muscles went limp.

  “Good kitty,” the Body Artist said.

  It sounded a lot like a purr.

  Chapter Five

  THE BODY ARTIST LAID the sleeping cat on her stainless steel table. “This ability of yours must have some inner creature driving it,” she murmured. “Or, given your age, some force from the outside guiding it.” She shook her head. “How did you convince that sweet little girl you’re a whole human person? Molly seemed sharp as a tack. And yet…” She bit her lip, thinking about the conversation in the park. “I suppose this is precisely why she’s feeling so tormented. The contradiction between what she knows and how you appear.”

  The Body Artist gazed down at the shaped cat, trying to guess what kind of person lay inside it. “What are you?” she asked the sleeping creature. “Some instrument created by the evil ones? A demon god? Well, I’ll find out now.”

  She held out her hand and a shimmering, surgical tool appeared in it. It was insubstantial, made of energy only, but she could grip it with sureness.

  She positioned her tool above the cat. “Now, let’s see what we can find here.”

  Using the magical implement, she cut open the cat body, reached inside, and lifted a ghostly form from it. This was Tim’s inner self—complete with T-shirt and glasses.

  Not a bad self-image,
she thought, holding it up to inspect it. And it’s suffused with light energy—so if he’s to align with the dark forces, it hasn’t happened yet.

  Still, she was certain that the potential for evil had to be there. She just had to keep looking for it.

  She pulled Tim’s ghostly self completely from the cat shape, and as she did, the cat form rippled, then turned back into the boy it had once been. “Bye-bye, kitty,” the Body Artist said. She gave Tim’s regular body a quick appraisal, then laid his ghostly one on another table to really start her work.

  “Seam ripper,” she commanded, and a tool leaped into her hand. She glanced at it. “Not you. The one with the insulated grip.”

  She began cutting into Tim’s ethereal body. “Huh. That’s odd. No resistance.” As she continued to work, she grew more and more puzzled.

  I don’t understand. I should have hit some darkness by now if he’s going to grow up to become the monster Molly described. Something must be wrong. She put down her tool and drummed her long fingernails on the steel table. Well, it could be a case of inner beastliness, I suppose. At least that’s fixable.

  “Heart seeker,” she ordered. A grisly-looking device materialized in the air in front of her. “Don’t open the heart. At least not yet,” she instructed. “Don’t even scratch it. I just want to get a good look. Cut me a window.”

  The device did its work. It hovered a few inches from Tim’s floating ethereal body, and as Tim’s heart was revealed, the Body Artist sank to the floor, bathed in the light streaming from the boy.

  Timothy Hunter felt cold. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times, trying to piece things together. His glasses were missing, so things were a bit blurry, as was his brain. He rubbed his eyes and noticed something—something important.

  “Hands,” he declared thickly. “I’ve got hands again.”

  He rolled over and spotted the blond woman from the park sitting on a chair facing him. “You!” he exclaimed. “Who are you? And what did you do to me?”

  She stared at him with enormous green eyes.

  “Uh, miss? Are you okay?” Tim asked nervously.

  “You’re a boy,” she murmured. “Just a boy.”

  “Well, I could have told you that,” Tim grumbled. “Saved you a whole lot of trouble.”

  “You don’t understand,” the woman said.

  “What’s to understand? I understand you put me in a cage!” As Tim sat up, he made the startling discovery that he wasn’t wearing his clothes. When—and how did that happen?

  “Did you put me in a towel?” He felt himself flush, and he couldn’t decide if he was more humiliated by the fact that she’d seen him without his clothes or that his voice squeaked when he yelled at her.

  The woman’s expression changed from awestruck to amused. “Stop blushing,” she said. She stood and stretched, working her muscles as if she’d been sitting there for a while. “I kept my eyes closed the entire time.”

  “You did?”

  “Well, no, but you don’t need to be embarrassed. I’m a professional.”

  “Oh great,” Tim scoffed, clutching the edge of the towel tightly. “That makes everything all better. A professional what?”

  “Body artist.” She waved a hand at the posters of heavily tattooed people behind her.

  Tim didn’t get what tattoos had to do with the current situation—or the magic he had seen her perform in the park. “I don’t see anything artistic about hypnotizing people while they’re cats,” he argued. “Or locking them up in birdcages or taking their clothes.”

  “I didn’t take your clothes,” the Body Artist countered with a grin. “You didn’t bring them with you on your little cat-capade.”

  Tim opened his mouth, then shut it again. She had him there. His jeans, his T-shirt, his sneakers, and his glasses must all still be at the fence behind Molly’s house where he had worked the transformation. “Whatever. There’s still no excuse for—”

  The Body Artist interrupted him. “You heard what Molly said in the park. She found out that you might grow up to be someone who would do terrible things. Not just to her but also to the world. I brought you here to stop that from happening.”

  Tim stared at her. “Is that possible?”

  She gave a rueful laugh. “Well, the problem is that all my theories were wrong. I’m a pretty decent witch, but you are one unique individual. So the technique I’d planned to use won’t work.”

  “Why?”

  “Several reasons.” The Body Artist sat back in the chair and placed her feet up on one of the tables, crossing one booted ankle over the other. “For one, I may have dubious scruples, but I do have a code. I’d never alter a nondemon without his consent.”

  Her posture made Tim realize who she reminded him of: John Constantine. John had been one of the trench-coated strangers who had first introduced Tim to the world of magic. Tim had liked John a lot, and this woman’s tough demeanor, gray-area mentality, and general arrogance were a lot like John’s.

  “When I discovered you weren’t innately evil,” she continued, “I thought maybe it was an inner animal problem.”

  “Huh?” Tim’s eyebrows rose.

  “Lots of people have some kind of animal inside,” the Body Artist explained. “Don’t ask me why. For most, it’s part of their soul or heart, and it doesn’t have to be bad. But in others, their beasts have consumed their humanity—crept up on it while it wasn’t looking and eaten it, making them dangerous. I thought that if I could find your beast, I could force you to face it. And tame it.”

  “What would have happened if I wasn’t tamable?”

  “I would have pulled out your fangs or declawed you,” the Body Artist replied. “But it doesn’t matter. There’s no animal in you.”

  Tim’s heart sank. “So that evil future me might still happen.” And Molly is still in danger.

  “What you will become is based on the choices that you make and on the ways in which you use your magic,” the Body Artist told him. “And since you have no inner evil, I can’t alter any aspect of you without your consent.”

  She sighed a long, frustrated sigh. “So look around the shop, find yourself something to wear, and I’ll give you directions home. And cab fare if you need it.”

  “Isn’t there something you can do? To make sure I never hurt Molly?” Tim asked.

  “Any number of things,” the woman said flatly. “None of them pleasant.”

  “Then do it,” Tim declared. “I consent. As long as I get to stay alive, that is, and stay myself. Do whatever magic you have to do to keep her safe from me.”

  The Body Artist’s eyebrows rose. “Are you sure?”

  “Am I sure that I want some morally ambiguous witch to fiddle with me magically? No. Am I sure I’d rather die than hurt Molly? Yes. Only make sure it doesn’t go that far, okay?” he added hastily.

  “It’s not easy,” the Body Artist warned. “It’s painful, and the pain continues.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Tim commented.

  “Just giving you full disclosure.”

  Tim nodded. “I’ve decided.”

  The woman gave him an admiring smile. “You’re braver than I thought. You just might be good enough for Molly after all.”

  Chapter Six

  I DON’T FEEL ANY different, Tim thought. Well, other than very conspicuous.

  He glanced down at the clothing the Body Artist had given him to wear home. Environmentally correct fake-leather pants, a black T-shirt held together with safety pins, and pointy ankle boots.

  “Someone should tell her that punk is seriously over,” Tim said. Although he certainly didn’t want to volunteer for the position of bursting her fashion bubble.

  He wished he had thought to snag a pair of sunglasses. He blinked against the bright sunlight. He’d been out all night again. “Oh, great,” he muttered. He was going to catch it from his dad for sure. He let out a sigh and shrugged. There was nothing he could do about it now.

  She tu
rned out to be pretty cool, Tim decided, thinking about the Body Artist as he made his way to the Soho tube station. There was nothing fake about her—despite her theatrical makeup and costume-like clothing. She called things as she saw them, whether she thought you’d agree with her or not, or would like what you were hearing. Tim respected that. It was a far cry better than the grown-ups who treated people his age like babies, or pretended everything was so nicey-nice all the time. Rough honesty was her style, and Tim thought maybe he’d try to make it his style, too.

  But how honest are you really being? he asked himself. You eavesdropped on Molly, which was bad enough. Then you went and had the Body Artist alter you to prevent harming Molly any other way because you don’t trust yourself. So in a way, you’re now kind of a fake you.

  He tugged the neck of his borrowed shirt away from his body and tried to see the tattoos the Body Artist had inked onto his chest. There they were: a vicious-looking scorpion emblazoned above an oversized butterfly. All in vivid—and painful—color.

  “There’s so much power in you,” the Body Artist had warned. “I have to use a two-pronged approach. These days it’s all about specialization anyway.”

  She hadn’t been kidding. Getting tattooed seriously hurt. Tim wasn’t sure if the pain was so intense because the tattoos were magical talismans or if all tattooing was a white-knuckle, teeth-gritting, howl-at-the-moon kind of experience. It had taken a while, but by the time he’d left the Body Artist’s place, his body felt like his own again, and his nerve endings no longer felt like they were on fire.

  At least I can come clean about it all when I see Molly, he told himself. I’ll feel a lot better after we talk this whole thing through. He paid his fare with the coins the Body Artist had given him, and dashed onto a train.

  The rocking movement of the train nearly put him to sleep. It had been a long, rough night. He’d expended a lot of energy being a cat. Then he’d been up all night dealing with the problem of his evil future. He looked forward to taking a long nap once he got home. That was one thing he could do while he was grounded.